Then-Major Walter Hudson, an Army lawyer, wrote about the topic in 1998, noting that there seemed to have been “an informal network of neo-Nazi skinheads in and around Fort Bragg”:

White supremacists have a natural attraction to the military. They often see themselves as warriors, superbly fit and well-trained in survivalist techniques and weapons and poised for the ultimate conflict with various races.

I deployed from Fort Bragg, one of the Army’s biggest bases, in 1992 to Somalia, and have had numerous other visits there. But I had forgotten all of the skinhead activity there:

— There was the murder of a black couple in 1995 by a pair of Soldiers, apparently to earn their “spider web tattoos.”

— Timothy McVeigh tried, and failed, to complete a special-forces course at Fort Bragg, which some authorities believe was the trigger that led him to kill 168 people by detonating a truck bomb he had parked next to the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995.

Subsequently, Congress held hearings, and there was an Army task force on extremism. “The task force, formed Dec. 12, 1995, did find that individuals or small, informal groups of individuals hold extremist views,” a Pentagon summary of the report said. “Allegations or suspicions of widespread, concerted recruitment of soldiers for extremist causes, and participation by soldiers in organized extremist activities, were not substantiated.”

In a 2006 report – a decade after Fort Bragg’s extremists made news – the Southern Poverty Law Center said “large numbers of neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists continue to infiltrate the ranks of the world’s best-trained, best-equipped fighting force.”

Army officials say they do their best to weed out extremists. But as Sunday’s slaughter in Oak Creek makes all too clear, one extremist in the ranks is one too many.